Marcia Devlin Executive Director, Academic Programs and Services Open Universities Australia

1. Effective teaching and support of Australian university students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds: Findings from a national study Marcia Devlin Executive Director, Academic Programs and Services Open Universities Australia

2. Overview • 1. Context and evidence base • 2. Conceptual framework • 3. Key advice for teachers • 4. Other outcomes from the research

3. 1. Context and evidence base • Funding and partners • Scope and method

4. 1.1 Funding and partners • Funded by ALTC/OLT, DIISRTE (2011-2012) • Led by Deakin University, in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology and Charles Sturt University • Open Universities Australia and James Cook University also acknowledged

5. 1.2 Scope and method • National study, international reference group • 18 month timeframe • $220 000 budget • Focus on practical outcomes for busy teachers and leaders • New conceptual framework developed

6. 1.2 Scope and method • National environmental scan of effective practice • Review of recent peer-reviewed and other significant literature (200+ papers) • 115 individual interviews (89 students, 3 unis; 26 staff, 6 unis)

7. 1.2 Scope and method • Study focussed on success: • Environmental scan of ‘what works’ • Interviewed successful students who were LSES and FIF and asked them “What has helped you succeed?” • Interviewed staff known for their expertise with LSES students and asked them “What helps LSES students succeed?”

8. Overview • 1. Context and evidence base • 2. Conceptual framework • 3. Key advice for teachers • 4. Other outcomes from the research

9. 2. Conceptual framework • Derived from the literature • Guided the research • Underpins the outcomes: • Guide for teaching staff • Guide for leaders and policy makers • Resources for professional development • Database of effective curriculum and practice

10. 2. A new conceptual framework • A rejection of deficit conceptions: • around students and • around institutions • Recognition, instead, that there is incongruity between the social and cultural capital of LSES students and that of the institutions in which they study.

11. 2. A new conceptual framework • ‘Sociocultural incongruity’ (Devlin, 2011) • Instead of a deficit conception, a conception that socioculturalincongruence should be bridged • A recognition of the agency of students (and of institutions)

12. The bridge

13. Overview • 1. Context and evidence base • 2. Conceptual framework • 3. Key advice for teachers • 4. Other outcomes from the research

14. 3. Key advice for teachers Know and respect your students Offer flexibility, variety and choice Communicate your expectations clearly and in plain language Scaffold student learning Be available and approachable to assist student learning Practice reflectively

15. 3. Key advice for teachers Know and respect your students Offer flexibility, variety and choice Communicate your expectations clearly and in plain language Scaffold student learning Be available and approachable to assist student learning Practice reflectively

16. 3.1 Know and respect your students Understand that LSES students are time poor; communicate with them, embrace and integrate their diversity and enable contributions of their knowledge to everyone’s learning.

17. 3.1 Know and respect your students Understand their context They have to undertake paid work; often they have multiple roles and caring responsibilities; they are time poor. …unless this is going to improve their learning outcomes, they’re not interested. Unless it’s going to make it easier to do that assessment task in a timely way, they’re not going to engage in it because they are very time poor [COL_021]

18. 3.1 Know and respect your students Understand what they bring to study …students who came from public high schools tended to do better and last longer and succeed faster,...[they] have fewer fails in things, so progress faster at university, than students who came from private schools...[the public school students] never had the resources handed to them and they always had to fight for everything and they were much more independent learners [COL_013].

19. 3.1 Know and respect your students Understand what they bring to study …stats have shown in our course that, generally speaking, our low SES students tend to do better. They’re slightly better motivated and probably more capable students…[COL_014] Consider eliciting and integrating the knowledge students bring with them to study:

20. 3.1 Know and respect your students …being able to pull in people’s different experiences because they’ve come from different areas can actually be really insightful. …when we’re talking about developing marketing strategy,…we’re talking to different groups and we want to know why one group might look at that marketing communication and go ‘That’s…a joke’, whereas another group might look at it and go ‘It’s perfectly believable’, and it’s because of that diversity in their backgrounds. So I’m very strongly in favour of …[teachers] trying to get as many different voices … into the mix as possible [COL_013].

21. 3.1 Know and respect your students Embrace and integrate diversity …use as much diversity as possible in your pedagogical practices, because there’s all sorts of different learners. Don’t presume that groups all learn in certain ways, watch out for generalisations [COL_026].

22. 3.1 Know and respect your students • Suggested strategies: • Use student cohort demographics to begin to understand who your students are at a broad level. • As far as possible, learn and use students’ names. • Examine the extent to which you include the student voice and student opinions in class or online.

23. 3. Key advice for teachers Know and respect your students Offer flexibility, variety and choice Communicate your expectations clearly and in plain language Scaffold student learning Be available and approachable to assist student learning Practice reflectively

24. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice While upholding academic standards, offer LSES students flexibility, choice in assessment and variety in teaching and learning strategies.

25. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice So to me, to respond to the diverse situations …it’s about flexibility and responsiveness to a person’s situation and thinking about what is the contextual factors around them that are impacting on their ability to meet all the demands of the course [COL_009]. When I’m designing my teaching delivery approaches, I’m quite supportive of not requiring students to be in a particular place at a particular time… [COL_027].

26. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice High standards (and assumptions) I’ve found that...low SES kids ...[are] very smart and determined people ...[COL_007]. …we take students who are low socioeconomic and first in their family…and last year and the year before that we had 25% of them graduate with distinction [COL_023]. I had someone who got High Distinctions, who came to see me to be better [COL_001].

27. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Teaching with technology …the recordings have been really popular...[COL_030]; The uploading of lectures with the PowerPoint slides attached to them... ...[COL_002]; …the online interactive …presentations … [STU_051]; ... the eLive sessions [STU_001]; The online module... [STU_008]; ... audio…podcast and…video... email[ing] your lecturer...24-hour access to your learning material [STU_045];

28. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Use a wide range of teaching strategies I try to provide resources that meet every learning style… because not everybody learns in the one way [COL_011]. I...use YouTube, or I use a lot of photos or images in my teaching that represent diversity ... to illustrate any of the kinds of content that I teach [COL_008].

29. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Use a wide range of teaching strategies I guess you could almost see it as an ‘epistemological equity’ in some ways because it’s meeting students where they’re at, it’s student centred, you know if a person’s unable to figure out how to use the technology, no problem, let’s find something else you know[COL_009].

30. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Interactive teaching and learning I think that it’s much more useful for students to have a conversation evolving around concepts so that they can explore and unpack things that they don’t understand as you’re going along [COL_027]. I use an interactive lecture style..., so ‘What do you think about this?’ and I’ll give them a scenario just to see where they’re at. [COL_024].

31. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Interactive teaching and learning …the interactive lectures where they ask questions…[and] they might have quizzes throughout the lecture, that’s helpful... It gives you the time to sort of draw aside and talk with the people next to you or get out your calculator and work out the quiz question or whatever. That’s really good as well to get you involved in the lecture rather than just sitting there, falling asleep [STU_010].

32. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Variety in assessment (mode) …assessment at university…relies too much on the formal written word, and on the traditional types of assessments, like essays and reports, and yes, there definitely is a place for those kinds of assessments. But in this changing world, we need to bring in more variety in modes of assessment, so not just a formal essay, but a variety of ways, to meet the diversity of our students as well [COL_012].

33. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Variety in assessment (mode) … [in] many of the assessments, they have been able to do it online, as a report, as an essay,…as a collection of interview information [COL_001].

34. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice Flexibility re assessment due dates I need flexibility because with work arrangements ...sometimes that all changes and I just need a few days’ flexibility here or there [STU_036]. ...with three kids... at times... [teachers] have assisted, whether it be [through] extensions, or special consideration... If they weren’t available, I don’t know what I would’ve done [STU_054].

35. 3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice • Suggested strategies • Examine your unconscious assumptions about LSES students and challenge yourself about the potential impacts of any biases you might hold. • Reflect on your preferences in teaching strategies and assessment practice – ask yourself how the range of these might be widened to encompass more interaction and a greater range of student learning needs, without compromising standards. 

36. 3. Key advice for teachers Know and respect your students Offer flexibility, variety and choice Communicate your expectations clearly and in plain language Scaffold student learning Be available and approachable to assist student learning Practice reflectively

37. 3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English Speak and write in plain language to ensure students understand the concepts being taught, the expectations of them and what is required to be a successful student.

38. 3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English …It can be daunting to kind of sit down and write your first five thousand word assignment…so definitely a clear structure…helps [STU_057]. Because they’re the ones marking my assessment…it’s good to know what they want in the assessments or exams [STU_074].

39. 3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English …if you lay the guidelines out…you say, ‘This is what I would like, this is what you can do’, they know very clearly what it is you want [COL_001]. …they’re told to write these essays and they want to see what an essay looks like. It’s like trying to teach them how to ride a bicycle without the bicycle… But if you’re teaching something, and if you can show an example of it, the students can see the expectation, they can see the level of what is expected of them [COL_012].

40. 3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English Accessible language and examples I feel like they’re using big words and big sentences when they can say the exact same thing in simple language and half the amount of words…In other words, ‘What does it actually mean?’ So I’ve had a few teachers that I really couldn’t understand and they were just so sort of theoretical that I found myself tuning out which was really difficult and it also can get maximally hard to relate to if they’re speaking in really high academic language… [STU_035].

41. 3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English Real life examples I do like the ones who ...have a more practical approach…they’re actually giving their life examples or speaking about their experiences and…I find that ... beneficial [STU_037]. ...the tutors...[are] quite personal, ...they’ll relate their own experiences, which is really good because you have something to go from rather than it being really abstract... [STU_088].

42. 3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English • Suggested strategies • Record a typical class and review your use of language for the use of jargon, acronyms, complex vocabulary, long sentences, the absence of clear explanations and the like. • Ask a small group of volunteer students or a colleague to listen to you teach and give you feedback about your use of language and your clarity.

43. 3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English • Suggested strategies • Actively practice simplifying your oral and written language and using explanations of greater depth. • Try to include a small number of short anecdotes or stories in each class to engage students and help them understand and remember concepts.

44. 3. Key advice for teachers Know and respect your students Offer flexibility, variety and choice Communicate your expectations clearly and in plain language Scaffold student learning Be available and approachable to assist student learning Practice reflectively

45. 3.4 Scaffold student learning Take a step-by-step approach to teaching to ensure students build on what they bring to higher education and are taught the particular discourses necessary to succeed.

46. 3.4 Scaffold student learning Well what I try to do is find ways in which I can scaffold the information…I…try and structure it so that every student has the capacity to look at the task and if they understand it to begin with, then they can move onto the next task...structuring the task… allows them to say ‘Okay, well, I’m at this point and I’m going to need some help to move into the next one’, whereas the other students who are doing better can just go, ‘ Yeah well I finished that one, let’s move onto the next one’. So everybody is sort of still moving [COL_013].

47. 3.4 Scaffold student learning Teaching and learning the discourses ...you might set an essay...Now, a culturally rich student audience will say, ‘Essay. Yes, I know essays. ...we learnt how to write an essay...I know how to get hold of literature and review...and critique it...’. [Other] students, however, may ...say, ‘You know, I’ve really not written very many essays...’, and they may ...be puzzling ...about what an essay actually is...So they’re not stupid, but the point is that they don’t have this cultural knowledge about how you write an essay [COL_016].

48. 3.4 Scaffold student learning Teaching and learning the discourses …what a student does… in a lecture…[is] they try to copy everything down religiously, because they’re not looking for the key points, and they have no idea…what they’re expected to do, and seriously, there are so many who have no concept of how to read academically, that it holds them back, so they stop doing it [COL_001].

49. 3.4 Scaffold student learning Peer learning …you know that they learn from each other, half the time better than from you [COL_029]. My tutorials are basically all about group work and they are all about group work and interaction and everybody in the group gets a say…and it is very, very important we do that, because that binds them together with the other students and it also gets them to settle into the university in the first five or six weeks, and that is critical [COL_006].

50. 3.4 Scaffold student learning Peer learning ...I found that if you get out and mingle with other people - you make friends and then you can learn from them as well, so you don’t have to be sort of alone and solitary in your learning. [STU_044]. The thing that really does help me learn is having study groups with other people in my course ...it motivates me to study as well ... And if I don’t understand something, they can help explain it or I can help them as well, which helps me remember it [STU_074]. …